Tour of the Waterfalls in Various Provinces
About This Series
Tour of the Waterfalls in Various Provinces (Shokoku taki meguri) is one of the principal landscape cycles of Katsushika Hokusai's Iitsu-period maturity, comprising eight oban tate-e designs published by Eijudo Nishimuraya Yohachi around 1833. Issued in the wake of the publisher's enormously successful Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, the set extended the new fukei-e market that the Fuji series had created and applied the same formula of serial topographical subject, perspective experimentation, and concentrated bokashi work to a roster of Japan's most celebrated waterfalls. The cycle gathers falls drawn from across the provinces, including the Amida Falls deep in the Kiso mountains, the Yoshino Falls associated with the warrior Yoshitsune, the Roben Falls at Oyama, the Kirifuri Falls at Nikko, the Aoigaoka Falls in Edo, the Ono Falls on the Tokaido, the Yoro Falls in Mino, and the Kiyotaki Kannon Falls at Sakanoshita. Each design pursues a sustained formal experiment with the visual problem that the waterfall posed, namely the rendering of falling water as a vertical compositional element whose pattern, weight, and atmospheric effect could carry the print rather than being treated as picturesque adjunct to a surrounding scene. The compositions accordingly foreground the waterfalls themselves, often pushing the surrounding landscape to the margins or treating it as silhouette against the dominant cascading mass, and Hokusai's drawing of the water as patterned, almost calligraphic surface anticipates the abstract handling of natural form that became one of his signal contributions to East Asian landscape. As one of the great late-period cycles, the series belongs alongside the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji and the Famous Bridges as evidence of the artist's mastery in his early seventies, when he was working under the Iitsu signature and at the height of his fukei-e powers. Modern scholarship treats the Shokoku taki meguri as one of the most pictorially adventurous landscape cycles of late Edo, and the series is comprehensively represented in the holdings of the Sumida Hokusai Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the British Museum.
Prints in This Series (2)
Frequently Asked Questions
Tour of the Waterfalls in Various Provinces (Shokoku taki meguri) is one of the principal landscape cycles of Katsushika Hokusai's Iitsu-period maturity, comprising eight oban tate-e designs published by Eijudo Nishimuraya Yohachi around 1833. Issued in the wake of the publisher's enormously successful Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, the set extended the new fukei-e market that the Fuji series had created and applied the same formula of serial topographical subject, perspective experimentation, and concentrated bokashi work to a roster of Japan's most celebrated waterfalls. The cycle gathers falls drawn from across the provinces, including the Amida Falls deep in the Kiso mountains, the Yoshino Falls associated with the warrior Yoshitsune, the Roben Falls at Oyama, the Kirifuri Falls at Nikko, the Aoigaoka Falls in Edo, the Ono Falls on the Tokaido, the Yoro Falls in Mino, and the Kiyotaki Kannon Falls at Sakanoshita. Each design pursues a sustained formal experiment with the visual problem that the waterfall posed, namely the rendering of falling water as a vertical compositional element whose pattern, weight, and atmospheric effect could carry the print rather than being treated as picturesque adjunct to a surrounding scene. The compositions accordingly foreground the waterfalls themselves, often pushing the surrounding landscape to the margins or treating it as silhouette against the dominant cascading mass, and Hokusai's drawing of the water as patterned, almost calligraphic surface anticipates the abstract handling of natural form that became one of his signal contributions to East Asian landscape. As one of the great late-period cycles, the series belongs alongside the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji and the Famous Bridges as evidence of the artist's mastery in his early seventies, when he was working under the Iitsu signature and at the height of his fukei-e powers. Modern scholarship treats the Shokoku taki meguri as one of the most pictorially adventurous landscape cycles of late Edo, and the series is comprehensively represented in the holdings of the Sumida Hokusai Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the British Museum.
The Tour of the Waterfalls in Various Provinces series contains 2 prints, created by Katsushika Hokusai.
The Tour of the Waterfalls in Various Provinces series was created by Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎).
We currently have 2 of 2 known prints from the Tour of the Waterfalls in Various Provinces series indexed in our collection. Browse them all on this page.
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